The dehumanization of digital
This post was inspired by a tweet or two from Cydney Wuerffel about using quotes from Twitter in research papers. Cydney asked a great question- whether or not these quotes from Twitter would be acceptable in academia. Initially I thought, “hm, not sure about that.” Then I reconsidered; why wouldn’t a tweet be fair game for a quote? This brought up a bigger question. What is it about digital media that creates a sense of informality?
For whatever reason, communications via Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, etc. are perceived as less “acceptable” than traditional forms of media. I’m making a rather large generalization by saying that, but personally I’ve gotten that sense from myself and others. This is especially visible inside of organizations, where leaders often believe the only people on Facebook are college students posting their drinking pictures. I see blogs being received as less authoritative in comparison to a newspaper, or even an online edition of a newspaper. I recognize that the writing is generally more conversational in blogs and on social networks, but why would that make the information less valid? If Albert Einstein were (alive, and…) posting theories on a blog? What is it about digital that makes conversations less real? Is it the lack of face-to-face interactions and, if so, will video change that?
Photo credit: umbex (Flickr)